Welcome to Pionline by Ric Wallace

For Parents seeking alternatives to a traditional college education for their children, you should consider this a vocational education. This course will be an excellent primer to judge if a more expensive, year long residency at a more advanced and expensive hands-on school is warranted.

Not all kids are going to be successful at this vocation or in this program. It takes some science and math skill. It takes a student who can stay on task, at least for well directed tasks and it takes students who are capable of self motivation. In all cases I will help students choose the appropriate level of study and I will monitor all students performance. If your student is incapable of learning these skills and methods despite our greatest efforts, I'll refund your money.

Meeting deadlines, producing documents and writing descriptive papers are all a part of the course work in this curriculum and are essential to measuring student learning outcomes. Your student doesn't have to be a mathmetician to excel as an audio engineer but an interest in science and math is a real plus.

Live Audio and A/V technologies are ubiquitous these days throughout the American lifestyle. Well trained technicians and sound engineers ensure a high level of customer satisfaction which in turn justifies the high costs of these systems and equipment. We base our training on our own paths through our careers and have developed the practical resources for a "guided" learning experience. We teach young people the methodology we have developed through long practice in the industry and ground them in the fundamentals of the math and science behind lighting and sound design. Only this combination of practical skill, fundamental knowledge and experience produce engineers and designers that excel at what they do and become artists in their own right. After students have completed an online course like this they will be well prepared to attend a year long, hands-on program like the Production Institute, in Athens Georgia. A student that completes both of these programs will be well positioned to gain an entry level job at a production company. From there it takes a lot of hard work and long hours as an apprentice before you can reach the professional ranks but it's almost always based on ambition alone. When I talk about long hours and hard work I'm not kidding, but it's also a privileged and pampered environment to work in usually. You'll certainly never go hungry working in the entertainment industry! It's a well paid job for those that can maintain their focus and professionalism. We take the time to instill customer service skills in our students as well. We are convinced that good customer service is as important as the any other skill set.